Just make them whatever length you want. I splice the top, then just adjust the handle height with the boat rigged. It also gives you a chance to get some weight on them and stretch them in prior to leaving the beach.

Granted, I have long arms, but the handles are always set way too low. When on the wire they should be almost out of reach. With your arm extended is where you have the most strength. If you're pulling yourself up at a low handle height, it is really hard, or at least harder than it needs to be. That's the sweetest thing to me about using line for trapezes, it is extremely simple to customize them. Factory stuff is made to fit everyone, so it doesn't work for hardly anyone well.

Are you saying you use line instead of Wire (coming down from the Mast Tang) for your lines??

Correct. For the trapeze. I don't trust my splicing abilities to do the standing rigging that way, though there are plenty of boats that have it. Rod rigging is really the way to go there, but stupid expensive. Zero stretch, you set rig tension, and it's there.

Spectra, dyneema, same stuff. Just a high tech line. 1/8 is just as strong as it's wire component. I think it breaks around 1200#'s For trap lines I just use a single braid 12 pleat(sp). Amsteel is a 10 I believe, and it's a MF'r to get a fid through. That and the Robline are the only two I've really played with.

Yeah, thank you, pbekkerh. I did a search and found where you had posted that in another thread. The old trap lines measured 19' 4 3/4". 5930 mm is about 19' 5".

So Karl is right too. Make them just out of reach. The Einstein of the cat sailors, he is.

Last year, one of the spare set of trap lines came untied somehow. Luckily it came fluttering down from the mast tang before being hooked up to anything. Never figured out what happened. It has a brummel bury splice and once the eye is locked it is can't come untied, so I thought. It wasn't cut either. It was a scary dark mystery...